Born at Toronto on 17 July 1855, the eldest surviving son of Sir Matthew Crooks Cameron (of the Lochiel Camerons), Chief Justice of Common Pleas, Ontario, and his wife Charlotte Ross Wedd of Maidstone, Kent. He was educated at Upper Canada College and at the University of Toronto, where he studied law for a short time before devoting his attention to medicine. He practised both as surgeon and as general practitioner, but preferred not to be called doctor, as was then usual in the Dominion, since he wished to follow the English custom which entitles a surgeon "Mr". Endowed with great administrative ability he took a leading part in founding the medical faculty of Toronto University out of the old Toronto Medical School in 1887. He was then nominated the first professor of the principles of surgery and surgical pathology. In August 1892 he succeeded Dr W T Aikin as professor of surgery and clinical surgery in the university, holding office until 1920, when he retired and was appointed emeritus professor. During this period he acted as surgeon to the Toronto General Hospital and to the Hospital for Sick Children. During the European war he received a commission, dated 25 July 1915, as lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian Army Medical Corps. He came to England and acted as surgeon to the Red Cross Hospital at Cliveden and to the Ontario Hospital at Orpington, Kent. On his return home he was appointed consultant for Canada, a post involving much travelling to visit disabled soldiers. He was the founder and editor of the Canadian Journal of Medical Science and was chairman of the editorial committee of the University of Toronto Monthly Journal. He was also a founder of the Alumni association of the University of Toronto and acted as its president. He married twice: (1) in 1876 Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Dr W W Wright; (2) Jessie Elizabeth Holland, widow of John Ross Robertson, journalist and philanthropist, who survived him. He was the father of one son and one daughter, children of the first marriage. He died at Toronto on 15 December 1933. Cameron was a brilliant clinical lecturer, a surgeon who introduced Listerian principles at the Toronto General Hospital, but conservative and somewhat averse to operating, and a cultivated gentleman skilled in the classics. Professor Grey Turner records that Cameron lectured in a very weak voice, that he was one of the last to wear an "imperial" beard, and that he was devoted to his ancestry, and as long he was able he came to Scotland every year to pay his respects to his chieftain, Cameron of Lochiel.